SSTO Tylo No Refueling Or Docking

[Matt Lowne]

On 11/6/2018 at 12:45 AM, DAL59 said:

This post didn't age well 

 

I made that post before the DLC was added, which included the parts required for the mission to work. Not to detract from Brad's excellent achievement here though!

[Chel]

What's wrong with a prequel meme? 

[JD_]

Not to revive an old thread for no reason but I used a single launch configuration wherein a launcher launches the second stage LH2 tank and reconfigures by swapping the rhino for a nuclear engine, then docking the lander to it and leaving that in orbit around Tylo during the landing itself. Not an SSTO, but an elegant single launch mission. Of course I used kerbalism so I had to do it as an unmanned sample return operation.

[JeDoesStuff]

Guess ill drop this here 

 

[camacju]

For some context, the above video was made after the development of a SSTO optimizer tool. Upon running this tool for a hypothetical Tylo mission it showed that everyone had been underestimating the Terrier engine by quite a bit, and also that using the Rapier's closed cycle mode at low velocity was beneficial because the higher TWR was more important than the reduced specific impulse. These made a Tylo SSTO at this scale possible, where it likely would not have been without these optimizations.

Edited February 22 by camacju

[JeDoesStuff]

On 2/21/2025 at 9:41 PM, camacju said:

For some context, the above video was made after the development of a SSTO optimizer tool. Upon running this tool for a hypothetical Tylo mission it showed that everyone had been underestimating the Terrier engine by quite a bit, and also that using the Rapier's closed cycle mode at low velocity was beneficial because the higher TWR was more important than the reduced specific impulse. These made a Tylo SSTO at this scale possible, where it likely would not have been without these optimizations.

And it wouldn't have been possible without you